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Enlargement in sentence

542 examples of Enlargement in a sentence

Now the most important strategic choice on the EU agenda, after Economic and Monetary Union, is enlargement to central and eastern Europe.
But it is beginning to look likely, perhaps inevitable, that the process of enlargement could be held hostage to the success of the programme for Economic and Monetary Union.
Many people in the European Union declare in public that enlargement into Central and eastern Europe is a vital and a strategic necessity for the European Union and for the whole of Europe.
Yet everyone knows that enlargement does not command enormous political enthusiasm in the member states.
One reason for this, no doubt, is anxiety that enlargement entails -- as it must -- some national or sectoral sacrifices of material economic interests; for example in the reform of the structural funds or the common agricultural policy.
As a result, a successful EMU will also vastly improve the prospects for a successful and harmonious enlargement process.
The problem, for the enlargement process, is that facts are much more important than probabilities.
EU governments are unlikely to commit themselves irrevocably to the enlargement process until they are confident that the single currency has got off to a reasonably good start.
Does this mean additional delay in the process of EU enlargement?
It is starting to be admitted that slowness in the enlargement process, will not just, or even mainly, result from foot-dragging in the European Union.
Admission of new members will repeat the positive experience of the last enlargement round.
The most recent stage of EU enlargement last May added millions of Roma from the new member states of Central and Eastern Europe.
Underlying this discrimination, especially in Europe, is cultural aversion to immigrants from regions with alien cultures, which may account for the absence of widespread protests against the EU's eastward enlargement.
It is true that at Cardiff the European heads of government reached no major new decisions of substance, even on those many difficult reforms which will be absolutely required for EU enlargement to the East.
"It is essential", they say, "to enhance European integration and secure the further development and enlargement of the European Union".
"Our aim", the two leaders continue, "must be to further develop the Political Union in tandem with the Economic and Monetary Union and with a view to the coming enlargement...
The war in Iraq did not delay the Union’s “big bang” enlargement, and was not the reason for the failure of referenda in France and the Netherlands on the Constitutional and Lisbon treaties.
The enlargement of NATO and the EU has embraced a dozen or so states in Central and Eastern Europe and in the western Balkans.
Such EU enlargement is fathomable only if it progresses hand-in-hand with bold reform of EU institutions.
The second worrying development in Germany - intimately linked to the first - is the latest twist in the debate on the planned enlargement of the European Union to bring in ten or more countries from Central and Eastern Europe.
It has long been clear that there is a substantial difference of opinion on this issue between the German people and their leaders: the political élite sees enlargement as a moral and strategic imperative; voters fear a flood of immigrants and job-seekers from the East.
With the passage of time, enlargement has become more unpopular, not less: at last count, only 20% of Germans are keen on the idea, and 68% are unenthusiastic.
Support for enlargement, however, is lowest in Germany, especially in East Germany, where voting has been decisive in determining the outcomes of all recent German elections.
But it is only too easy to imagine what would be the consequence of holding a referendum: enlargement would almost certainly be rejected in practice and in principle by a large majority.
In Britain, by contrast, we are now seeing a steep intensification of political controversy, not about enlargement (even though it is unpopular), but about the question of membership of the single currency.
Little wonder, then, that the largest drops in popular support for enlargement registered by the Eurobarometer Survey occurred in EU countries with the most generous welfare states.
But support for enlargement is fading everywhere, right on the brink of accession.
Erdogan stressed this pro-Western orientation again but a few weeks later, at the EU enlargement summit held in Copenhagen in mid-December.
Leon Brittan, then a commissioner and supporter of enlargement, recalls that some officials and countries even hoped that the pre-1989 line could be held.
They felt that enlargement even to the Scandinavian and Alpine countries was going too far.
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